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Nicholas Carr

The Shallows: 

What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

What IS the internet really doing to our brains?

Have you ever stopped and taken the time to realize how much your brain does for you especially without you even realizing it?

No? Well then take a step back and read…

The Internet

Your Brain

Imagine you are reading a book…and at the same time you are reading that book you are simultaneously working on a crossword puzzle…this is what Nicholas Carr believes you are doing while you are using the Internet 

Make sense? No? Well think a little harder… 

The internet is continuously changing the way we all read, the way we all think, the way we process information. Sound a little bit more like a crossword puzzle now?

Nicholas Carr

“The medium IS the message…we have this different kind of ‘self’ than our ancestors”

The way YOU choose to convey THE message, IS the message

The Shallows

Carr believes that the internet is a medium based on interruption, and it is changing the way people read and process information

Research began for The Shallows after noticing a change in himself in his own ability to concentrate 

“I’d sit down with a book, or a long article, and after a couple of pages my brain wanted to do what it does when I’m online: check e-mail, click on links, and do some Googling, hop from page to page” – Nicholas Carr to Robert Siegel 

The internet is a chronic state of distraction that follows us long after we shut down our computers 

Ask Yourself This…

Do the movies and TV you watch mimic the way you have always thought?

Have we learned by the way TV and movies have taught us to think it is the way it should be?

So I Asked Myself… 

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127370598

Music

African music – the feel is very lazy, they are very behind the beat

I thought this was a very interesting point, I have never once thought about what is the item that makes African music so distinct compared to other types of music – the feel of the music being lazy and behind the beat

Sound 

Sound is pressure waves traveling through the air

Sound in air is like ripples moving through water

The pitch of a note is determined by its “frequency” – how frequently it vibrates

The higher the frequency, higher the vibration

Every musical note we hear is known as a fundamental pitch (the loudest)

Different instruments have different fundamental pitches, there is an overtone series that makes them sound different

There are physical proportions embedded in the strings of an instrument

Principles of form embedded in the universe

“We shall therefore borrow all our Rules for the Finishing our Proportions, from the Musicians, who are the greatest Masters of this Sort of Numbers, and from those Things wherein Nature shows herself most excellent and complete.”

Leon Battista Alberti

Digital Music Theory

It is physics, it has a mathematical order written to it, and that order is possibly written to the universe

Definition: In Music Theory and Digital Composition, students explore the structure, writing, and recording of music as a design problem, with the intention of creating and releasing a finished piece of original music

Harmonic ratios as room shapes – I did not understand this

Is there some underlying math that rules/runs the world?

The Creation of Vinyl Records

As you sing, the diaphragm would vibrate, that connects to a needle that is connected to a disc made of wax, as you started singing, the vibrations of your voice would cut through the wax, then the process continues until you could stamp the wax disc

1950’s: music was recorded to tape, rather than to wax

Highest frequency humans can hear – 20,000 with perfect hearing, with age it deteriorates

Analogue vs. Digital 

Analogue

EX: singing into the microphone, current generated in the microphone, generated by my sound

The electrical current generated is analogous to the sound wave

It is changed its form but has not been created into numbers

I have no idea how this example relates – It makes sense yes but I don’t get how mathematics and physics all tie into this

Electric currents varies with vibrations

Analogue process – converted to electricity

Digital process – converted into numbers, numbers represent possible frequency distributions (any yes or no answer)

Idealism vs. Realism 

Idealism

Idealism is envisioning or seeing things in an ideal or perfect manner; essentially, the theory that states that our reality is shaped by our thoughts and ideas

Idealists settle for perfection, aiming for high, sometimes unrealistic goals, glass half full kind of person

Although, idealists deal with things as they should be, through the internal world of rationalism and ideas

Realism

Realism, is when things are viewed in a more pragmatic approach and actual view of the situation

Realists settle for mediocrity, only aiming for achievable targets

Although, realists deal with things as they are, through the external world of material and facts

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”

– Terry Pratchett

“I’m not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic – the part of you that you treasure most – to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?”

– Kenneth Cain

“Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist – someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.”

– Peter M. Senge

“The idealist hopes. The romantic sees doom. The postmodernist sees doom and hopes.”

– Bauvard

“They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics.”

– G.K. Chesterton

What are YOU?

Idealism causes you to see things in a very hopeful manner, shaping situations with your own ideas. Realism, on the other hand, causes one to assess a situation as it is, without overt emotional involvement

Idealists tend to be more positive when compared to realists, in how they perceive things and carry out tasks

When making decisions, realists are more goal oriented and thorough than idealists, who may have lofty ambitions, but lack the clarify and focus to put them into action in an achievable way

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/idealism

Richard Stallman

If you are a Richard Stallman fan, you choose your own master

“To have the choice between proprietary software packages, is being able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. And in the area of computing, freedom means not using proprietary software.”

“If programmers deserve to be rewarded or creating innovating programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”

“The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.”

“Not copy-right but copy-left.” – Copyleft is the idea that this cannot be sold, you are contributing.

-Richard Stallman, American software programmer

Digital Reinvention

1990s: Richard Stallman spent most of his time studying copyright laws

Stallman believes that the information and how it runs should be silo

However, anyone who has some sort of expertise, you can contribute it…this eventually becomes The Encyclopedia

This I find to be incredibly fascinating and gives everyone a chance to add, well almost everyone

Crowd Sourcing

The more eyeballs = the more criteria

The bigger the group of people working on a problem, the more solutions are developed and produced

The more people that like it, the more popular it becomes and the more useful it will be

It is operationalized every single day; i.e., Netflix, Amazon

Back to Stallman…the more people working on a software problem, the better the solution will be

Ideas are improved and get better when they are freely expressed

People take a wack at it…they see an efficiency, a mistake, they want to make a change, they want to make something better or more precise

Enclosure vs. Openness

Not exactly sure what we were talking about here or what it means, I was lost completely

If anything, I find myself to be very open, always giving, always sharing

1800s

Do you know where it all began? The transportation? The technology? The accessibility? The opportunities?

Lets begin…

1830s

Every city, every town, every village, and every farm in the United States ran on their own times

The source of time ran according to the suns direction and the shadows it would reflect on to the ground 

1840s

Telegraph definition

“An apparatus for communicating at a distance by coded signals”

Invention of the Electric Telegraph

This one of the first telecommunication technological pieces of the industrial and technology age

Visual Telegraphs

The earliest telegraph system made of smoke signals, drums, and mirrors used to reflect sunlight; to make these systems work and operate, both the sender and receiver need a method to interpret the signals

Electric Telegraphs

System made by an electrical current running through a wire and when the current is broken in specific patterns it signifies certain letters and/or phrases

This required the invention of generating and storing electricity as well as a way to record the breaks running through the current

This eventually lead to the invention of the Railroad

1860s

Single-Wire Electric Telegraph 

People’s lives were governed by the conditions of light reflected by the sun, therefore, time of work is strictly governed by the seasons

Until the invention of electricity 

Late 1870s

Telephone definition

“A system that converts acoustic vibrations to electrical signals in order to transmit sound, typically voices, over a distance using wire or radio”

Alexander Graham Bell

Most saw him as a threat, many seem to praise him now; how do you feel?

Bell’s Telephone

Better yet…you can even call to talk about it and look at that, you have Alexander Bell to thank

1915

Wire-Frame Model definition

“A visual presentation of a 3-dimensional (3D) or physical object used in 3D computer graphics. Created by specifying each edge of the physical object where two mathematically continuous smooth surfaces meet, or by connecting an object’s constituent vertices using straight lines or curves”

Frank Gilbreth Wire Model

“The precision of the techniques of motion study, and of the larger field of scientific management indicate both the depth of the intellectual investment in technological progress and the extreme non-autonomy of the scientifically managed worker, whose very hand movements are dictated by the managers”

1930s

After a dramatic rise of the telephone and decline of the telegraph, a dramatic number of messages sent was at an all time low  

Have you ever thought of life without a TV? Life without a smartphone at. your fingertips? Remember what it was like when we were young? Don’t you wish we could go back to certain simpler times?

Well I do…our world is operating off of technology and machinery; while this is absolutely incredible, we miss way too much of what is going on in the world around us

Have you realized, the only way we find out about the world around us is social media and/or the news? Rarely we hear about breaking news from word of mouth

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma05/dulis/id/motion.htm

History

HISTORY DOES NOT MAKE SENSE- lots of unclear items, it is not what should be expected of what a museum does (its here, right in front of you)

Civil war – large sums of white people are fighting for confederacy

What are they fighting for? Why would they fight in a war they do not have a stake in?

I wish I knew…history is not my specialty

The Minstrel Show

The American form of entertainment developed in the early 19th century

The shows consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances, which mocked people specifically of African descent

Black Face

“Blacking up” calls attention to the whiteness of your skin

If you are not black, you are white

If you are not white, you are black

So ask yourself…

Is the point of the Minstrel Show ambiguity?

“If I could have the nigger show back again in its pristine purity, I should have little use for opera”

– Mark Twain

“Blackface performers are, the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens”

– Frederick Douglass

The Minstrel show is deeply entangled in American cultures

Many argue that Mikey Mouse is considered to be a Minstrel show character, do you?

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/minstrel/minstrel.html

http://black-face.com/minstrel-shows.htm

The Computing Age

Everything about the computing age, what was developed, what was created, it is all a fact of the Cold War

US vs. USSR – a fight for global influence; containing the spreading of communism 

Are the creations of weapons what made the United States more than successful?

Tough thing to think about… 

The “Cold War”

Hierarchy

Authority

Centralized Control 

Cold War Research

Targeting

How to aim bombs, shells and especially rocket launched nuclear missiles…this is where computers become central to this

Computer Invention

First came the analog, mechanical computers – Thank you Vannevar Bush

Secondly came the electrical computers (ENIAC – Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), which converts numerical values into electrical signals/values

Then all the way to the invention of the Microphone

Welcome to onMason.

My name is Lindsay Kiedaisch, come explore class with me.